McAfee’s “urgent” tweet came after a series of messages were posted to his account, encouraging his half a million followers to purchase lesser-known cryptocurrencies.

The real John McAfee is no stranger to tweeting about which cryptocurrency his followers should invest in, so the “hacker” certainly wasn’t entirely clueless about how to blend in with the security veteran’s regular postings.

If we are to believe John McAfee, he’s a frequent target for hackers. And apparently it’s Twitter’s fault, not his.

“Though I am a security expert, I have no control over Twitter’s security. I have haters. I am a target. People make fake accounts, fake screenshots, fake claims. I am a target for hackers who lost money and blame me. Please take responsibility for yourselves. Adults only please.”

In response, to the alleged hack, John McAfee says he has disabled two-factor authentication (2FA) on his accounts. If you ask me, that’s a truly bizarre course of action - and one that I hope other Twitter followers do not emulate, especially as the site has just enhanced its 2FA security feature to properly support third-party authentication apps.

Is John McAfee telling the truth? Or spinning a fanciful yarn about his account being hacked for his own reasons?

About the author, Graham Cluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy.

3 Responses

It’s a shame they didn’t add after the ‘$BAT’ a certain ‘$SHIT’ and then ‘$CRAZY’. But I suspect they had their reasons.

If I was a conspiracy theorist I would suggest he did it himself: as in he did it as a publicity stunt (nothing new), blamed Twitter (iirc nothing new to blame others) and then decided to stop giving advice (perhaps his best move yet?). That’s an odd one of course, since it brings him less attention but who says conspiracy theories have to make sense? The fact he talks about disabling 2FA is also odd but that’s kind of fitting for him, isn’t it?

I think the story is as mental as he is, frankly.

Happy New Year btw. :) Long time it’s been but hope you’re doing well. I am doing superb although I still don’t think I’ll be around as much - just have a lot going on in my life.

It’s not a new topic, 2FA has been vulnerable for a while now if talking of using it with a phone and SS7 vulnerabilities. If being done with a physical token card, that’s a bit different. Only reason this is garnering attention is due to the visibility of the individual involved.

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